Blood Sinister

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Slider met his eyes and raised his eyebrows. The man nodded slightly. After a suitable pause, Slider said, ‘Might have a bit of snow before the weekend, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘C’n do with it,’ he said, in a voice faint and hoarse with a lifetime of fags. ‘Warm winter don’t kill the bugs.’ He had a Norfolk accent.

  ‘At least there haven’t been too many sporting fixtures cancelled, though.’

  ‘There’s always an upside and a downside.’ The little man up-ended his pint and Slider took his cue.

  ‘Get you another?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do. Ta very much.’

  When the landlord had refilled the glass and the little man had offered and lit a cigarette, they were licensed to talk without drawing suspicion; though Slider had the uncomfortable feeling that the landlord had no illusions about why the stranger in the well-worn suit had suddenly turned up at his pub.

  There was nothing in the least porcine about Piggy Banks – it was evidently just one of those inevitable nicknames, like Chalky White and Lofty Short. ‘You was wanting to know about Furlong Stud, then?’ he asked in due course. Another couple of customers had come in, and the landlord was further off. On his way down the bar he had also turned on the background music, a courtesy Slider could normally have done without, but useful now. Had he done it deliberately?

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider. He made a polite gesture towards his wallet pocket. ‘I expect you’ll have expenses to cover.’

  Piggy slid his eyes away modestly. ‘Half a cent’ry’ll cover it,’ he said. ‘Tidy’s a mate of an old mate of mine who wants to do him a favour. Slip it me after so that lot don’t see.’ With a jerk of his head towards the rest of the population.

  ‘I don’t think there’s much the guv’nor doesn’t see,’ Slider said, feeling he ought to warn Banks that his cover might not be impenetrable.

  ‘He used to be one of your lot. Cozzer from down London. He’s all right. I know him and he knows me. Anyway, Furlong. It’s a scam, o’ course.’ He looked to see if Slider knew that.

  ‘I thought it must be. Do you know how?’

  ‘Ever heard of a horse called Hypericum?’

  Slider shook his head. ‘I’m not a racing man.’

  Banks didn’t seem to mind that. ‘Smashing colt. Got everything – blood, bone, and a heart as big as a house. Unbeaten as a two-year-old, won the Queen Anne Stakes at Ascot and the Prix Morny at three, and the Canadian International. He was a real engine. Second in the Guineas and would’ve had the Derby, but they over-raced him and he broke down. After that he was never really sound. When he was fit, he could beat anything, but he’d go all right for a while and then break down again.’

  He took a drag on his fag and had a long, sustaining cough. ‘Anyway,’ he began again, breathlessly, ‘this codger Bill Carrington used to be Hypericum’s trainer. He loved that horse. When they decided to sell it, he couldn’t bear to see it go where it might not be well treated, so he bought it himself and left to set up his own place.’

  ‘Where did he get the money?’

  ‘Oh, he had a bit put by. He’s not a bad trainer – had a few winners. Bit o’ prize money stashed away. And he may have had a backer, I dunno. The new place, I reckon it was all meant to be legit. But it ain’t that easy to get on, specially when you’re starting up. And Hypericum – they don’t call him that now, use his old stable name, Gordon – anyway, he didn’t improve. Couldn’t race him. So Carrington hit on this scam.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Just a twist on the old ringer dodge,’ Banks said, with a shake of the head that it should be so easy. ‘A lot of what they do’s legit. Breeding, training, racing. But when they get a horse that don’t show, looks all right but ain’t gonna get in the money, they set it up for the syndicate. Pull in a lot of daft city types with more money than sense, show ’em the horse in stables, and then on the gallop they bring out Hypericum. Dye his coat to look like the other. The mugs see him run, they think they can’t lose. Carrington gets ten times the value of the horse, plus all the running expenses for a couple of years before they get fed up and jack it in. And the beauty of it is, the paperwork’s all right as rain. Nowadays, with lip tattoos and microchips an’ all, you’d have a job putting a ringer in a race. But the mugs, they bought a certain horse, that’s what’s in the contract, and that’s what gets entered in the races. Beautiful.’ He sighed over his pint. ‘It’ll break Carrington’s heart when Hypericum gets too old, or breaks down for good. But he’ll have had a good run for his money by then.’

  ‘It sounds too simple to be true,’ Slider said.

  ‘Like all the best dodges,’ Banks said wisely, ‘it works on greed. The punter twists himself.’

  ‘Greed, yes. The brochure said the investors could expect a return of twenty-four per cent,’ Slider said.

  Banks nodded. ‘That’s a little joke of Bill Carrington’s. A while back, last year I think it was, there was a newspaper article about investing in racehorses. Everyone talked about it around the stables. And it said that on average you could only expect to get back a quarter of what you put in. So it’s not twenty-four per cent on your investment, it’s twenty-four per cent of your investment.’

  Slider didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Banks was looking at him speculatively. ‘You going to do anything about it?’ he asked.

  ‘What? Oh, no. It’s not my field. I just wanted to save a friend of mine from making a fool of himself.’

  ‘Glad of that,’ Banks said. ‘I done this as a favour, but I wouldn’t like it to get about I been talking. Wouldn’t do to make meself unpopular.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone. You can trust me. Jockey, are you?’

  ‘I was. National Hunt. Till I broke me hip. Big horse fell on me, going over the fifth at Aintree. Joey Jojo his racing name was, but we called him Socks. Big chestnut, two white legs be’ind like a Clydesdale. Lovely horse. Gor, could he jump! And kind? But he came down on me and broke me hip, and that was the end of me riding career. Still, I was the lucky one.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘They mended my hip, but he broke his leg, and they ’ad to shoot him.’ He took a long pull at his pint. ‘He was a lovely horse.’

  Echo of Tennyson, Slider thought. She has a lovely face; God in His mercy send her grace. He slipped Piggy Banks his fifty, drained his pint, and left under the clocking gaze of the landlord, into the whizzing darkness of rush hour.

  A little pricking rain had started, and it was cold. Everyone was hurrying home to their tea and telly, and the world seemed too big and dark and hostile. Slider’s mind was full of other people’s misery – Medmenham’s, Noni Prentiss’s, even Josh’s – for who knew what emptiness his swaggering had been meant to hide? And the unavenged dead haunted him, their sadness the greatest of all, to be over and finished before their time, no more life for them, no more anything. He believed in ghosts – or shades, or furies, or something. When he was very little, they hadn’t had electricity at the cottage, and lamplight gave itself to believing in things half seen. His mother had said the dead watched over you and were nothing to be afraid of; but their eyes, whether reproachful or forgiving, were not what you wanted your darkness peopled with.

  The other main road out of Sudbury, the A134, went almost through Upper Hawksey, the village of Slider’s birth. It was as long as it was broad to go back that way, via Colchester instead of via Chelmsford, he told himself; and if he was passing within a mile of the cottage, he might just as well call in and see Dad.

  Bumping carefully down the muddy, rutted track from the road to the cottage, he saw the light up ahead of him, the single square of the kitchen window, hanging flat on the absolute blackness beyond the headlights like a painting on a velvet wall. Pulling onto the parking space at the end, he saw that the square was pale red, light shining through the red gingham curtains drawn across the window. When he cut the engine and got out, there was that absolute silence that went with the absolute
blackness, something you never got in Town, and which thrilled down his spine, like the evocative smell – Christmas trees and tangerines, for instance – that takes you straight back to childhood.

  The kitchen door opened, spilling light out, and his father stood there in the doorway. He looked frail with the light behind him; his neck rose in cords from the worn collar that had been snug last time Slider had seen him. Slider was aware that he had not been down for some time, and he was seared with a panicky guilt. He would make time to come down more often; he would bring the kids to see Grandad; he would bring Joanna – Dad liked Joanna. He shouldn’t let the Job blot out everything else.

  ‘That you, Bill,’ said Mr Slider – not a question, but a greeting.

  ‘Hello, Dad. I was passing this way, so I thought I’d call in.’

  Silently Mr Slider stepped back from the door to let him in. Not one for wasting words, wasn’t Dad. Inside the kitchen was spare and spotless, much as it had been in Mum’s day, but not dank any more – central heating had been installed long ago.

  ‘How are you?’ Slider asked, as one does.

  ‘I’m not complaining.’ Mr Slider regarded his son impassively a moment. ‘Cuppa tea?’

  ‘Thanks. I’m sorry I haven’t been down for a while.’

  ‘Busy, I expect.’ He was wearing grey trousers and a grey lambswool sweater over a brown and beige check Viyella shirt which Slider recognised as one of his own which he had passed on to Dad when the collar got too tight for him. How many years ago? It had to be ten, probably more. The collar was rubbed white along the fold, and the sweater was darned at one elbow with a man’s patient clumsiness; but everything about him, and about the house, was spotless, and as he walked past Slider to go to the gas stove, he carried only the clean smell of fabric softener. Slider felt a rush of desperate love. It wasn’t necessary, you see, to be like Mr Singer! For all these years his father had kept house, tended his garden, gone out shooting rabbits and wood pigeons, cooked his tiny meals, slowly washed up and put away, and at the end of each day, retired to his neatly made, empty bed; never complained, paid his way, kept up standards, was no trouble to anyone. But what did he think, what did he feel?’

  ‘How do you do it?’ Slider asked aloud.

  ‘Do what, then?’ Mr Slider asked, putting a match to the gas.

  ‘All this,’ Slider said, waving a hand round the kitchen. ‘Just keep going on, without her. Doing – things. How do you bear it?’

  ‘You just do,’ Mr Slider said. He settled the kettle over the flames, and turned to regard his son with steady, faded blue eyes. ‘You have to get on with things, don’t you?’

  One day, Slider thought, I’ll look like that. His father’s grey hair grew the same way, made the same shape as his own; they had the same eyes, the same build, except that Dad was now thin with age. He wondered suddenly, vividly, what Joanna would look like when she was old. ‘Dad, I’m in trouble,’ he said.

  Mr Slider nodded. ‘Thought it must be something.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to lose Joanna.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Slider stared thoughtfully a moment longer. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘No,’ Slider discovered. He had been kept from lunch by the phone call, and hadn’t eaten since. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘I haven’t had mine yet. Beans on toast, I was going to have. Suit you?’

  ‘Fine. Thanks.’

  ‘Sit down then. No, I’ll do it. Can’t have two women in one kitchen, your mother used to say.’

  Slider sat and watched as his father pottered about, assembling the meal, knowing he would not be hurried, that the listening must wait until the meal was before them. Dad would always listen, but he liked to have something to occupy him while he did. Eyes must not be met while personal matters were being aired.

  At last the plates were on the table, the knives and forks, the cruet, the cups of tea. ‘Tuck in,’ said Mr Slider.

  And Slider told him about Joanna’s job offer.

  ‘How long’s it for, this job?’ Mr Slider asked when he paused.

  ‘It’s a permanent job. Years, anyway. Maybe for good.’ He watched his father’s hand reach out for the sugar-caster: a brown, old-man’s hand, all knuckles, the fingers thickened from a lifetime’s hard work. ‘It’s a wonderful thing for her, for her career. I just don’t know what to do.’

  ‘No, I see that,’ Mr Slider said, stirring his tea. ‘O’ course, it’s her decision, whether she goes or not.’

  ‘But her decision will be affected by mine, whether to go with her or not.’

  ‘That’s right. You can’t duck it that way,’ his father said approvingly.

  ‘But what could I do over there?’

  ‘Get a job, I suppose. Other people manage somehow.’

  ‘And give up the Job?’

  Mr Slider knew enough to recognise the capital-letter distinction. ‘Well, that’s the other side of it, isn’t it.’ He looked up, suddenly meeting Slider’s eyes, his usual impassivity softened by the hint of a smile. ‘It’s what you’d call a dilemma.’

  Slider said nothing, only applied himself to the last of his beans.

  ‘Thought I’d sort it out for you, did you?’ Mr Slider said knowingly. ‘Give you a quick answer. Rabbit out of a hat. I can’t do that, son. I can only tell you that I like your Joanna, and I think she’s good for you. Only time I’ve ever heard you laugh is when you’re with her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Mr Slider nodded. ‘I don’t mean you don’t smile or have a chuckle, you’re not sullen, but it’s only with her you really laugh out loud.’

  ‘She makes me laugh,’ Slider admitted.

  ‘Your mother did me, too.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. She was a very funny woman, your mother. In a quiet way.’

  ‘I never knew that,’ Slider said. He had loved his mother, but she had never struck him as a comedian.

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ said Mr Slider, gravely twinkling. ‘Kept it for me. When we were in bed.’

  Slider asked, a little shyly, ‘Do you miss her?’

  ‘Your mother? All the time. Every day.’ He looked round the kitchen as if he might see her, having mentioned her. ‘Funny, I can’t remember what she looked like, now, not really, but there’s a hole where she ought to be.’ He picked up his cup with both hands and sipped his tea. ‘A job’s just what you do to stay alive. There’s good ones and not so good. But your wife’s something else.’

  The problem was back. ‘But what could I do? The only thing I know is the Job. And there’s my pension to think about.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got to think about that.’ Mr Slider drained his cup and put it down, and began gathering the plates together. ‘You stopping a bit? I was going to light the fire. We could have a game of crib and a glass of beer.’

  ‘No, I’ve got to get back,’ Slider said absently, too absorbed in his own thoughts to wonder what the alternative for his father would be.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Mr Slider said.

  Slider dragged himself up. ‘Let me wash up, anyway.’

  ‘No, no, I can do it. Not much here.’

  At the door, Slider said, ‘Thanks for the tea. I wish you could have told me what to do as well.’

  ‘Your trouble is, you always think too much,’ Mr Slider said. ‘Ask yourself, what does it say here?’ He tapped himself on the chest. ‘’Cos that’s what you’ll have to live with.’

  Slider smiled suddenly at this typical Dad-advice, and put his arms round his father in a quick hug. He felt all bones. They didn’t often do this, which made it a bit perilous, but Mr Slider returned the pressure briefly, and gave his back one or two pats, as undemonstrative men do when emotions threaten to assert themselves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sense and Sensibility

  Slider didn’t feel up to telling Atherton about the racehorse business straight away. It would keep for now, he thought. He needed to get home to Joanna. She
met him with determined brightness, and he took his lead from her. She cooked for them, and they ate, chatting lightly on neutral subjects, and then spent the evening gamely not talking about the problem. But probably neither of them could have said afterwards what they had watched on the television; and when they went to bed, they clung together as if it were their last night on earth.

  Atherton was late in again the next morning, and when he did appear he looked more white and strained than ever. Slider eyed him with scant sympathy. ‘On the slam again last night?’

  Atherton shook his head. ‘I’ve lost Oedipus.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Slider. ‘What d’you mean, lost?’

  ‘I let him out last night when I got home and he didn’t come back. I went round the streets calling and calling for him but I couldn’t find him. I went out looking again this morning – that’s why I’m late. Sorry.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s all right. Cats go on the wander sometimes.’

  ‘Not him. And he always comes when I call.’

  ‘Well, he’s an old cat, isn’t he? They can get a bit contrary. He’ll turn up again when he’s ready. I expect you’ll find him waiting on the doorstep when you get home tonight.’

  Atherton shrugged, rejecting the comfort. It didn’t seem the right moment to tell him about Furlong Stud and add to his troubles. Anyway, there was the case to consider. Slider called everyone together in the CID room and brought them up to speed on the Piers Prentiss murder.

  ‘The MO looks similar, and there was no robbery of any sort so we have to assume a personal motive. I don’t think it’s going too far to suppose the two murders are connected.’

  ‘Yes, but what’s the connection?’ Swilley said. ‘There’s Richard Tyler – she was working on his biography, and Piers was his new lover, but why should that make anyone kill either of them?’

  ‘Yes, and if she’d been working on the Tyler biog for six months, why was she only worried and drinking heavily for the last few weeks?’ said Atherton.